The first box office high-flyer for 2023 is certain: The Super Mario Bros. film has been in cinemas for almost a month and has already over a billion US dollars recorded. The colorful animated adventure, which is based on the Nintendo brand of the same name, is the most successful film of the year so far.
The Mario brothers didn’t always have success in the cinema. The first film adaptation from 1993 went as legendary flop into the history books. Not only did Super Mario Bros. fail at the box office. The idiosyncratic film was mocked by both critics and audiences. Only years later did he achieve cult status.
The first Super Mario Bros. film ended the Hollywood careers of Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel
The Mario defeat in the 1990s had bitter consequences for the directing duo Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel. The film ended their careers almost overnightas Variety summarizes in a background report.
You can watch the trailer for Super Mario Bros. here:
Super Mario Bros. – Trailer (German)
Even before the theatrical release, Morton and Jankel knew that they no future in the dream factory when King Kooper actor Dennis Hopper formulated the following sentence in an interview:
[Rocky Morton und Annabel Jankel] don’t give interviews? That’s the smartest thing I’ve heard from them. That’s the only intelligent thing they’ve really ever done.
As Variety writes, Morton and Jankel were fired a day later by their agency, CAA, which was tantamount to a death sentence. Who of such a influential Hollywood agency dropped will have a very hard time getting your foot in the door again. Morton draws a dejected conclusion from Super Mario Bros.:
It was the end of our film career. After Super Mario Bros., Hollywood let us down.
What hurt Morton and Jankel even more were those Cast reactions, who publicly railed against her. Bob Hoskins, who starred as Mario at the time, called the film about one “Nightmare” and the “biggest disappointment of his career”. For the directing duo he had only one contemptible “damn idiots” left over.
After Super Mario Bros., Morton and Jankel never shot a movie together again. Jankel founded MJZ, a company specializing in TV advertising. Jankel worked on various TV projects and, after a long break, brought her first film since Super Mario Bros. to the cinema in 2018 with Der Honiggarten.
However, the big comeback of the two is still a long time coming.
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